


Mythic

by adreadfulidea



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 14:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3732121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreadfulidea/pseuds/adreadfulidea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Urban legends tend to grow with the telling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mythic

**Author's Note:**

> Based on an idea I saw floating around tumblr that Shaw was going to end up being some kind of urban legend as far as the Russian mob was concerned.

 

 

They said that she had jumped through a third-story window and landed on her feet. That she could read minds, that she had friends who talked to God. She appeared out of clouds of smoke and shot a man through a brick wall. Someone killed her, once, and she came right back.

The woman in black.

 

 

“She steals blood,” said Arkady, leaning back with a cigarette in his mouth. He turned his face to the sky above - no stars, there was too much light pollution for that - and took a drag, exhaling a curl of smoke from his nostrils. “She did it to Peter Yogorov.”

“That’s a vampire,” said Sasha, who was near sixty and had no sense of humor that anyone could discern. “You’re thinking of vampires.”

They were waiting for a shipment of cocaine outside the warehouse. It was quiet and cold, just how Katya liked it. She watched the men, leaning against the back of a truck. They didn’t talk to her. They rarely did, which was also how she liked it.

“No, she’s a ghost,” said Arkady with a wide grin. He crept around Sasha in a circle, hunching his shoulders stupidly and holding his arms out like a zombie. “A ghost who can get into your veins.”

“She’s a woman,” said Katya. She stubbed her own cigarette out on the ground, grinding it to pieces with her boot.

Arkady stopped his cavorting. “What do you know about it, my fine Siberian ox?”

She could have kicked him in the balls for that, but it wasn’t worth it. He was jealous because she was taller than him. She would make sure to loom over him as much as possible in the future.

“I know,” she said.

“You’re from Siberia?” Sasha asked. “No one told me that. My grandparents came from Siberia.”

“She’s from _hell_ ,” said Arkady, and Katya wished her smoke was still lit so that she could flick it at his eyes.

 

 

Katya knocked on the door perfunctorily before opening it. That would have gotten her in trouble with some of her former employers, but Yogorov didn’t spend his time shooting up or screwing strippers on his desk. He actually worked.

He was lying on a couch he had pushed up against the wall, watching TV. Sometimes he let her watch hockey games in there. She didn’t have cable.

“Yeah?” he asked. He sounded tired and looked like he had a headache, but that was nothing new.

“It’s done,” she said. “Everything went fine.”

“Good,” he grunted. “They give you any trouble?”

“Smooth sailing, Tsarevich. Like I said.”

“How many times have I told you not to call me that?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“That depends on what it is,” he said, and got up off the couch.

Katya hesitated. He didn’t look like he was in a good mood. But fuck it - she would never know otherwise. “Did she really steal your blood?”

He shut the door in her face.

 

 

Katya remembered the following, from that night last fall:

It was dark and the SUV hit her vehicle from behind. Probably one of Dominic’s men, but she never knew for sure.

Everything went black for a second, and she woke up with her car on its side in the ditch. There was something stinging her eyes and she thought it was sweat. It was blood.

She could smell gasoline.

Someone had pulled her out. Her vision had been compromised, but -

A woman, definitely. Small. Strong for her size.

Dressed all in black.

 

 

Katya wanted to know for sure. That was all.

 

 

She asked around but didn’t get anywhere with it. A few dead-end names. A traumatized store manager who swore that one of his employees had gotten into a firefight in the middle of the cosmetics section. That had to be her, because how many of those could there _be_.

It all led down the same blind alley. The woman _was_ a ghost.

A ghost with friends, apparently. Katya was at her favorite Indian restaurant - best dosa in the city, which she could eat until it came out of her ears - when a woman slid into the booth across from her. She had large glittering eyes and a smile that didn’t reach them at all.

“Uh,” said Katya. “Hello?”

“Hello,” said the woman. Her smile never wavered, and neither did her fixed stare. “I think we need to talk.”

“I think I need to finish my meal,” said Katya. “And that I have no idea who you are.”

“My name’s Augusta King,” said the woman. She reached into her jacket and Katya tensed, aware how trapped she was, but the hand that re-emerged wasn’t holding a weapon. Just a badge.

It wasn’t real, and neither was that name. Katya knew from Feds, and her mysterious visitor wasn’t one.

But hell. It wasn’t like ‘Katya’ was _her_ real name, either.

“Okay,” she said, playing along. “Okay, what do you want?”

“You’ve been asking a lot of questions about a friend of mine.”

Katya blinked. _Oh_. This was so much better than she had expected. “You know her?”

“Yes. Do you? Have you,” she paused and there was something strange and eager and hungry in her face, “have you had contact with her recently?”

“No,” said Katya. “I never really spoke to her, at all.”

So-called Agent King frowned. “Then why -”

“She helped me out,” said Katya. “I wanted to - I wanted to know why.”

“I guess that clears it up,” said King, in a way that suggested she was taking more to herself than to Katya. She started to get up. Her eyes had gone flat and dim.

Katya grabbed her wrist. “Wait. When you see her, can you tell her that I said - thanks?”

It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

“No,” said King. She pulled her hand away, gently. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to do that.”

Katya stayed in the restaurant for a long time afterwards. She ordered a drink and watched her food go cold.

Sometimes you don’t get to pay back a debt.

 

 

The ambulance was attending to Yogorov and he’d stopped coughing up river water, so Katya took to the side streets at a jog. It would only take a minute, and she thought she had heard -

It was them. She could only see their outlines, crouched down on a rooftop. No faces. No identifying details. But it was them.

She turned back and let the city swallow her up again. No sense in drawing unnecessary attention.

They had Yogorov in a shock blanket and he looked hilariously offended by it. “Tch,” she said, clucking her tongue at him. “This could only happen to you.”

He glared impotently at her. She climbed into the back of the ambulance with him. “I’m going to ride with my friend to the hospital,” she told the paramedic.

The paramedic nodded. He’d probably already been slipped a few dollars to keep things quiet. Her suspicion was strengthened when he stepped out, leaving them alone.

“You should let me be your driver,” she told Yogorov.

“Opportunistic,” he wheezed, and coughed weakly.

“Yes,” she said. “But since yours is currently at the bottom of the river…”

“Fine,” he said. “But no smoking in my car. That shit’ll kill you.”

“Good,” she said. “I won’t let you down, Tsarevich.”

“You better not,” he said. The doors to the ambulance were open; he squinted out into the night, puzzling something over. “I’m not sure, but… I thought I saw someone I knew. In the water,”

Katya remembered those silhouettes, out of reach on the rooftop. Quiet and waiting.

“They say she died and came back to life,” she said. “Twice.”

 

 


End file.
